Sun General Counsel Michael Dillon, who’s now blogging, points to a fascinating article (pdf) titled “Reebok Rules” from former Reebok GC John B. Douglas, III. The “Rules” contain “important lessons about lawyering in an entrepreneurial environment.” If you serve businesses of any size, it is a must read.
![The [non]billable hour](http://www.nonbillablehour.com/images/headway/header-uploads/xNonbillable,P20Hour,P20442.png.pagespeed.ic.sJ1SiCvIT_.png)
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Fire Us, Please!
Joel Spolsky has noticed that FAQ pages for online services almost never include instructions for how to cancel your account, then talks about making it easy for his clients to “fire” his company. And about their moneyback guarantee?
Since we started the company in 2000, the moneyback guarantee has cost us precisely 2% of revenues, which also includes chargebacks, credit card fraud, and people who accidentally ordered twice. That figure that has remained remarkably stable through the years and which I think is well worth it, but then again, I’m only measuring the cost, because the benefit is too hard to measure!
Do you have instructions how your clients can fire you? And about that guarantee….
Going to Get Really Sick? Follow These Rules
Gretchen Rubin is trying to find happiness. Her blog, The Happiness Project, chronicles her year-long journey, in which she tests “every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study [she] can find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah” to help her become happier.
Lately, she has been reading dozens of memoirs about illness. Here are the lessons she’s gleaned from them about dealing with doctors and hospitals (though they could just as easily be applied to dealing with lawyers and law firms):
You need to educate yourself as much as possible. Doctors don’t have the time or the emotional energy to explain all the possibilities to patients and their families.
Write everything down. It’s hard to take in information the first time you hear it. And keep thorough records for insurance purposes, too.
Every additional course of action carries pitfalls: side effects, pain, the difficulty of recovery from surgery, subsequent infections, time in the hospital, the real possibility of medical mistakes. So resist the impulse to “do everything.”
Double-check everything you can. When my father was in the hospital, his doctor told him not to drink anything, then a nurse urged him to take a pill with water—which would have been disastrous, if he’d done it. A friend who went through chemo had a special notebook where she wrote down her prescriptions, and checked her notes against the chemo bags before she allowed each treatment to proceed.
Before following a course of treatment, press as hard as you can—is this procedure absolutely necessary (e.g., do you really have to have that enema)? How painful will it be? How invasive is it? What other options exist, and are any of them less invasive, painful, etc? What will happen if the procedure isn’t done? Arthur Frank refused to sign a consent form when his doctor didn’t explain an operation to his satisfaction—and then ended up not having it at all.
Note that the medical staff often minimizes the discomfort and difficulty of treatments. Perhaps this arises from a desire not to be discouraging, but the effect is often to make it difficult to plan (will it really be possible to go back to work within a few days?) or to make patients feel that they’re complaining unreasonably.
Stay with the patient as much as possible. I don’t know what the visiting rules are in hospitals, but having read these books, I don’t think I’d leave a patient alone there, ever, if I could help it.
Insist on understanding the true prognosis. In several accounts I’ve read, people reflect sadly that they didn’t really understand that the patient was going to die. And so they made choices they regretted—for instance, resisting using methadone, despite its effectiveness in fighting pain, because of its addictive properties. A ridiculous concern to someone who will die in three months! Terrible news is hard to hear, and it’s hard to give, so if you want to know, you need to push. Stan Mack recalls that Janet’s doctors’ talk was “ambiguous.” He recalled a doctor saying, “You don’t have a curable cancer anymore, but with medication there is a subset of women who…” They didn’t understand what they were being told.
The Anti-BlogHer?
This looks like an interesting conference, but wow, only one woman speaker? No thanks.
Law Firm Recruiters, Beware
As Larry Bodine has recently pointed out, a lot of lawyers-to-be don’t care about making partner anymore. For a more up-close look at this phenomenon, read this post from a first-year Indiana University law student:
I’ve found that I’m actually rather happy spending time with people that I like and who like me back, and that friends and family are way more important to me than any traditional notion of success in the legal world. To put it differently, I think it’s fair to say that I want to be a successful person first, and a successful lawyer second.
I think that I now see success in my career as something different than I did when I came to law school. I don’t want to work 80 hours a week and see the people I care about in the few hours in between; I want to work with people who are nice and well balanced and in an environment I like and still have time to have a life outside of my job. Whatever that entails, it’s what I’m interested in, and I think this post from Anonymous Law Student has a lot of insight and really gets to the heart of what matters to me in life these days.
The time is coming where money won’t be the motivator for young lawyers to take your firm’s offer that it used to be. You’ve been warned.
Surprise Your Clients With Lunch
One of the crazier PR stunts I’ve seen for a while: Cambrian House, an open-source software company, turn up at Google unannounced and feed them 1000 complimentary pizzas .
I love this idea, but if I were a law firm serving any medium to large business, I’d take it in a different direction: I’d surprise my biggest/best clients with enough free pizza to feed all their employees.
If I wanted to create even more buzz, I’d buy pizza for all my business clients’ employees ON THE SAME DAY. You could surely work a pretty good deal with the local pizza places, and think about how much everyone would talk about you.
If I had a few thousand dollars I was thinking about spending on that secondary yellow pages book in my town, I spend my money doing this instead. I’m sure I’d get a much better bang for my buck.
Things I Like
I’m playing around with Amazon’s new “AStore” product. It allows me to build a virtual storefront with products I choose. I’m going to change it every month with new and cool books, magazines, and gear that I personally recommend. Check it out and let me know what you think.
links for 2006-08-30
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Downloadable e-book on selling professional services.
Office Design for Employees
Designing your firm’s new space? Take a look at this post about a printing company in Montana. Some of the unique office features:
Day Care and ‘family’ is built in; there are no other options! The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them. It’s a fundamental. Andrew made it a key design driver. And the # of Baby Bjorns in the office was an indicator that for many of the employees, a family ‘quality of life’ decision was made without compromising their careers. And its a spectacular daycare. Small adult/kid ratio. Healthy environment. Kids loved. And obviously very happy teachers and parents on site. It wins all visitors over the second they come into the building. The main floor is designed for humans, not executives or administrators. Andrew had been told by the design team at first that a ‘traditional’ executive/client floor was needed. Sends the right message. Fits the design. Tradition. Andrew felt that didn’t match the company’s feel. Instead, the upper floor does have all of those elements — like a typical ‘entry’ to a school — but for any visitor, the real sense is that it’s an open series of collaborative spaces that are designed for all team members (regardless of rank) to relax, create, rest, and connect. Every space is a learning space. Man, there just weren’t any spaces in the building that didn’t suggest learning, collaboration, experiment, and team. Sure, business had to be done and things were divided up by tasks and teams, but the real take-away had to do with energy and collaboration. I’d have given anything for teachers/administrators and school designers alike to have spent time on the bottom floor (ground level, due to the slope that building sits on) where the teams were moving at full speed, serving clients around the nation, and providing rigorous real-time design/printing solutions. Spaces were vibrant. Team members were free to work in a variety of settings. And the place had a learning buzz about it. All workers are humans, learners and team members first. I was struck by one programmer/service expert that had forgone the chair entirely. He used a yoga/exercise ball as his chair — not only did it help create a different dynamic, but it also had a huge impact on his back problems. I also liked that it allowed him to move. To bounce. To fidget. To shift. Mmmm….imagine if kids were given the same option. Imagine. We talked about this a bit, but what really struck me was that the ‘trappings’ of professionalism were tossed out the window with a grand investment being made instead to support ‘how’ people worked, created, succeeded, and collaborated. Every team member looked happy/healthy. And the spaces reflected that — not choosing expensive design but instead being creative and letting the teams be able to gravitate towards what worked best for them. Solo. Small groups. Large groups. Formal. Informal. Inside. Outside. In other words, every space a learning space. Even hallways. Very little wasted…and a far more vibrant learning organization because of it!
Check out the entire post for more.
Drive Divorce Clients to Your Practice
Are you a divorce lawyer? Here’s a great vehicle for marketing your practice:
Thanks to Klaas Oost for permission to use this photo (flickr link), taken in Cape Town, South Africa.
Be Phone Tree Free
Got an e-mail the other day from Marcin Musiolik, alerting me to his company’s new project called Bringo! Here’s how it works:
- Find the company you’d like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)
- Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).
- Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.
- When we call you back, pick up your phone and you’re done. No more phone trees.
Looks pretty cool. Try it out and let them know what you think in the comments to this post. And if you think your clients or customers would use this service to contact your firm, it’s time to rethink your telephone answering options.
UPDATE: Marcin tells me they are adding law firms next month. I’d sure not want to see mine on there.
It is never too early to do your client holiday shopping.
Don’t know where you’d find these online, but if you practice criminal law and want a nice gift for your clients, may I suggest this lovely door mat:
(found on a front porch in the Soulard area of St. Louis)
You Can Call Me “Mr. Homann”
I was out for a walk the other day and saw this real estate agent’s magnetic sign on his SUV:
Despite the incredible amount of information on the sign, notice that the one thing it doesn’t have is his first name. If you wanted to contact him, but didn’t remember the phone number, or even the agency, how would you find him? Would you search for “Mr. Johnson” in the Yellow Pages or on Google?
Think about your business or firm name. If someone hears it and wants to contact you later, will they be able to find you?
links for 2006-08-29
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Silly time waster
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Some decent deposition and client interview tips.
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Firefox extension combining GTD with GMail.
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If you speak in public, check out this site.
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If you like Hugh McLeod, you’ll like these charts on index cards.
Know When Your Files Go Bad
This nifty little product would be great for lawyers keeping track of deadlines. From the company website:
Timestrips® are single-use, disposable, smart-labels, which automatically monitor lapsed time, ranging from under 1 day to 6 months.
Imagine sticking one to every file, phone slip, or letter. Then you could just look through the piles on your desk to see what’s about to go bad. ;-)
(Seen first at CoolBusinessIdeas.com)
links for 2006-08-24
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If you loved Space Invaders, Asteroids, PacMan, Frogger, etc., you’ve got to see this.
Advice for “Contact Us” Pages
Here’s some good advice for those “Contact Us” pages on the web:
Problem: Contact options are limited. …
Solution: Give customers more control of how to contact you. Provide plenty of options: phone, form, e-mail, and chat. Let them contact you their way. RADirect offers a telephone number to talk to an engineer, as well as a short form and a chat option when available. The e-mail form guarantees a response in one business day. If you click on “Speak to a System Engineer” in the nav bar, you’re guaranteed a response in two hours from the point of action.
Problem: People are left to send and pray. So many contact forms and “thank you for contacting us” pages leave visitors frustrated. They don’t provide any information on what to expect when someone contacts the company via form or e-mail. Visitors want to know when and how you’ll reply. Some pages won’t even give the business hours. …
Solution: Tell visitors exactly what to expect when they reach out to you. Tell them what’s happening and what to expect in the future. If they must have information handy when they contact you, be sure to list that on the “contact us” page, too.
There are lots more “Problems” and “Solutions” in the article. Worth a look.
Do All Your Attorneys Talk To Clients Daily?
From Kayak.com’s founder comes this management gem:
At Kayak, I require that every employee talk or email with one or more customers every day. When I’ve mentioned this to friends– that we give personal replies to all feedback and require even high-paid engineers spend time talking with customers every day– they think I’m crazy. They think I should push customer support off to a separate lower-paid team rather than bothering my expensive engineers. But I will tell you a secret:
Having every Kayak employee talking with customers every day has been the best thing we have ever done. It is one thing to (a) have a computer or IVR trying to answer customer emails and phone calls and then (b) having a customer support department trying to address unanswered questions and then (c) raising the ones they can’t handle to a quality assurance department who helps out, and who then (d) raises only a tiny subset of those issues to the product engineers.
It is quite another thing to make engineers talk directly to customers, removing layers of communication. Many brilliant engineers are empathetic problem solvers but they are also sometimes lazy and don’t like to do anything more than once, including answering the same question over and over. When their software does something stupid, and they are thus required to answer the same customer question about it many times, and they have to look those customers in the eye and see their problem, those engineers then actually take the time to fix the problem.
Do all the attorneys in your firm talk to a client every day? Maybe they should.
Less Work Equals Same Productivity?
Interesting story related by computer company manager:
So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.
But [the company] discovered two surprises.
First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!
Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.
Now, if you could just figure out a way to get your clients on board and let you charge them for that phantom day each week.
links for 2006-08-23
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I want bad.
Good (Net)Vibrations
Here’s an exercise for today. Check out NetVibes, a really cool customizable home page, with the ability to display multiple types of content in drag-and-drop boxes (read a quick review here). Then think about the kind of RSS-driven content your firm or company could generate (think RSS feed for each case, for example) and imagine giving your clients a home page customized just for them. Oh yeah, the cost of a NetVibes page? Free.
Please Judge Me by the Company I Keep
One of these things is not like the other: David Maister, Sylvia Coulter, Bruce MacEwen, Patrick McKenna, Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Simon Chester, Dennis Kennedy, Dan Pinnington, Gerry Riskin and me.
We all contributed to the Innovaction E-Magazine (link to pdf), “The online publication celebrating innovation in the practice of law.” I took part in a roundtable on law firm innovation with several of the luminaries mentioned above. The e-zine was put together by the fantastic Jordan Furlong (Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine). Check it out, I think you’ll find it valuable.
The Key(s) to Attorney Motivation
Here’s an idea to motivate law firm employees: Give the “Employee of the Month” the keys to the company car. From Autoblog:
[At Infusion Software], if you’re deemed the month’s top performer, you get the keys to the “Infusion Z,” the company’s silver Nissan 350Z. The car sports the Infusion logo on the door, so they get some free advertising wherever the Employee of the Month drives. That’s a fair trade if you ask us. When you’re cruising in the Z, it’s not like you can see that from the cockpit, anyway. Oh, and should an employee get into an accident with the car, he or she has to pick up the insurance deductible.
What kind of car should law firms use? A Mercedes, a BMW, or perhaps a Bentley? What kind of car would motivate you to bill those 220 hours this month?
Soulard Idea Market Recap, Idea Speed Dating
It has been a week since the Soulard Idea Market, and though I’ve been crushed by a few projects, I wanted to share at least a little about the event (with more to come later). Others have shared their mostly positive impressions about the night (see here, here, and here), and Dave Gray even posted a video to the “Unreasonable Request” portion of the event.
While I’ll share my full recap later this week, for now I wanted to focus on the “Idea Speed Dating” that kicked off the evening.
At the beginning of the event, I asked everyone to pair up with someone they hadn’t met before. For the next three to five minutes, they were to discuss the topic I gave them. At the end of the time period, everyone moved on to another person in the room and I asked a different question. In no particular order, here are the questions:
In what ways would you like to make a difference in people’s lives?
What would be impossible for you to do, but if you could do it, would make the most difference in your success?
What new skills have you learned inthe past year (or want to learn in the next year)?
Talk about the most interesting book you’ve read lately?
What is your favorite St. Louis Restaurant?
What is the most compelling idea you’ve heard in the last year?
What surprised me is how engaged everyone became in each conversation. Granted, we had some pretty cool and interesting people at the event, but at the end of every question, I had to pry people apart and encourage them to pair up again before I could ask the next one. This will definitely be a part of other Idea Markets that I put on, and I’d highly recommend using a version of this as an ice breaker for your next networking event.
technorati tags: soulard+idea+market, brainstorming, facilitation, speed+dating
Forgive the Construction Mess
I am noodling around a bit with my blog’s design. Forgive the duplicate postings and the visual mess for the next day or so. Thanks.
Another Way to Impress Potential Clients
Ever think of adding a multi-media presentation to your professional firm’s web site? For a very cool (and different) idea, check out Ganas Consulting’s Declaration of Independence.
A Web Navigation Test
Here’s some good advice from A List Apart on web design and navigation:
Any good global navigation scheme should, at a glance, answer the top three questions every user has at the back of their mind on any page:
- Where am I? (Present)
- Where can I go? (Future)
- Where have I been? (Past)
Here’s a test: Go to any random page on the internet. A deep page, not a home page. Then see if you can answer all three of those questions without looking at the URL or mousing over links to see where they go. See if you can tell your present, future, and past purely through visuals. Even in our brave new Web 2.0 world, most sites fail.
Does your firm’s web site pass the test? Check out the article for lots more great stuff.
Meet Tomorrow’s Clients
According to this study:
Gen Yers spend 12.2 hours online every week — 28 percent longer than 27- to 40-year-old Gen Xers and almost twice as long as 51- to 61-year-old Older Boomers. Gen Yers are also much more likely to engage in Social Computing activities while online. For example, they are 50 percent more likely than Gen Xers to send instant messages, twice as likely to read blogs, and three times as likely to use social networking sites like MySpace.
“All generations adopt devices and Internet technologies, but younger consumers are Net natives who spend more time online than watching television,” said Forrester Research Vice President and co-author of the report Ted Schadler. “Younger generations live online, reading blogs, downloading podcasts, checking prices before buying, and trading recommendations.”
Soulard Idea Market Final Details
I think I’ve communicated with everyone who has expressed interest in tonight’s Soulard Idea Market, but if I’ve missed anyone (and you find this post today) here is the text of the e-mail I just sent:
Good Morning! If you are receiving this e-mail, it is because you have told me you’d like to come to tonight’s Soulard Idea Market. Though we have quite a bit of flexibility on space, I’d like to know if you are still planning on attending. Here are the details for tonight:
When should I arrive? I have reprinted the agenda below, but we’ll get started between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. Arriving late is OK.
Where should I go? The Lucas School House (www.lucasevents.com) is the venue for the event. It is located at the intersection of Gravois and Allen, on the Western edge of Soulard. Here’s a link to a Google Map. There should be plenty of on-street parking available.
How can I contact you? My cell phone number is 618-407-3241. I will also have my BlackBerry with me, so I will receive my e-mail.
Should I bring my laptop? You can, though I’d discourage it. While there is WiFi available, I don’t know how robust the wireless connection will be. Most of the brainstorming will be done on Post-it Notes and in small group discussions. I think laptops tend to get in the way of effective in-person collaboration. Of course, your experience may differ.
What should I bring? Paper, pen, money for the cash bar, and ideas. Bring lots of ideas.
Who can I bring? Like I said above, we have some room for additional people. At this point, I have absolutely no idea how many people will be there tonight. Somewhere between twenty and sixty. If you’d like to bring a guest, just let me know. I may have to order more food.
Will there be food? Yes. There will be cold appetizers, courtesy of Gill Wagner, president of Honest Selling.
Will there be drinks? Yes, but it will be a cash bar.
When will we be done? We have the space until 8:30. However, if we have enough people who want to hang around, they may let us stay later.
Flickr, Delicious, Technorati? Yes. Use “SoulardIdeaMarket” as the tag. If you don’t know what this means, we’ll explain tonight.
Why didn’t you answer my question? E-mail me or call me and I will.
What else can I do? If you can, log in to the CollectiveX site (an event/networking site for the Idea Market) and add your contact info and details. Here is the link.
Here’s the Agenda I posted on my blog:
The Agenda: Well, there really is no “Agenda” as I’d like to have the Idea Market be the kind of place where people can bring their business problems, issues, questions, and (of course) ideas and share them with other innovative, creative, and generous folks. Think of this first event as sort of a “beta test” for a new type of networking/brainstorming social club that just happens to take place at a private happy hour in a cool, hip place. There is at least a 70% chance that this agenda will change, or even be ignored when we all show up, but for now, here’s how I see things happening:
5:30 – 6:00 Bar Opens, Attendees Arrive, Initial Brainstorming. In the last several LexThink!(R) events and private retreats I’ve done, we’ve posted provocative questions on large Post-It Notes all around the facility. When attendees arrive, they’ll be given a marker and a pad of smaller, half-page Post-It’s and asked to walk around and contribute their thoughts and answer the questions posted. This works wonders to get the creative juices flowing and opens up attendees to sharing other ideas the rest of the event.
6:00 – 6:30 Introductions. Idea Speed-Dating. I want to take a page from speed dating events: Attendees will have thirty minutes (broken up in much smaller chunks) to meet as many other attendees as possible and share the most compelling idea they’ve heard, best book they’ve read, most interesting person they’ve met, or most difficult problem they’ve faced in the past year.
6:30 – 6:45 Break.
6:45 – 7:30 Open Space Problem Solving. If any attendees are facing a particularly vexing business problem, and would like the group’s help to solve it, they can announce the problem (or post it on the wall) and any attendees who’d like to help can break up into small discussion groups to brainstorm solutions. Alternatively, anyone with a topic they’d like to discuss can also announce it here and interested people can join the discussion.
7:30 – 7:45 Break.
7:45 – 8:30 Open Space Idea Sharing. This is just like the Open Space Problem Solving session, except we’ll focus on new ideas.
8:30 Unreasonable Request Time. One of the three most compelling ideas I’ve stumbled across while blogging is Lisa Haneberg’s Unreasonable Requests. In short, we often have things we’d like to ask others for, but are afraid to ask. I’m going to ask everyone to write down an unreasonable request, post it on the wall with their name and phone number, and anyone who wants to grant the request can do so. Because the requests are, by definition, “unreasonable,” I don’t expect many to be granted — so everyone who gets one granted will be totally surprised.
8:30 – ??.?? Cocktails on the Patio (or elsewhere). We’ll stick around the School House as long as they’ll let us, but anyone who wants to continue their discussions after we’re politely asked to leave can do so at one of about 30 Soulard bars/restaurants that are within walking distance.
I will see you all tonight. This is going to be cool!
Matt
technorati tags: soulardideamarket, innovation, soulard+idea+market
Happy Birthday to Me
I’m 38 today. Going to have a fun “me” day. See everyone tomorrow.
links for 2006-08-04
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If you love cars, you’ve got to watch TopGear. Now on the web!
Hello Gill Wagner
I’m showing Gill Wagner the power of blogs.
Movie Marketing Madness
I love to find interesting marketing ideas, even (or especially) if the ideas are not directed to professional service providers. Mark Cuban has hundreds of cool marketing ideas submitted by readers on his blog in response to this:
So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, i want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.
So go for it. Come up with a great idea that i want to use and I will come up with a job for you to make that idea happen.
There are now over one thousand ideas submitted by Mark’s readers. Take some time to read them. You are sure to find a nugget you can use in your practice.
Tick is Slick: Time Keeping the Web Way
All right, we all know the name of this blog is The [Non]Billable Hour, but you’ve got to check out Tick, a really cool Web 2.0 application for tracking time (and measuring it against budgets). Very slick, and free (for now). Are any of the legal technology vendors making anything this cool, intuitive, and pretty?
Tick is Slick: Time Keeping the Web Way
All right, we all know the name of this blog is The [Non]Billable Hour, but you’ve got to check out Tick, a really cool Web 2.0 application for tracking time (and measuring it against budgets). Very slick, and free (for now). Are any of the legal technology vendors making anything this cool, intuitive, and pretty?
What Start-Ups Want in a Lawyer
OK, so Andy Lark is talking about hiring a PR agency, but I think he could just as easily be talking about hiring a lawyer:
But I don’t want $15,000 dollars worth of service. I don’t even know what that is!
I want results. I don’t care what it costs or whether an agency has to under or over service to deliver it. I just want results against the agreed budget. You commit, I commit, we all commit together.
What is more troubling to me as a Valley CMO is:
1) finding a great agency is bloody hard work. They are few and far between. At any billing rate. Few CMOs I know get the value of PR or AR, let alone the value of a good agency… I accept we are part of the problem, but…
2) finding an agency that gets your business and has a real enthusiasm for contributing to the growth of the business – harder still
3) finding an agency that understands that great ideas get funded – near impossible. They are caught in the conundrum or belief that ideas require budget prior to being generated. Bullshit. (and I am talking about real ideas, not those regurgitated from the last pitch)
4) finding a team that can explain why they should get paid more and then associate some kind of outcome with the result – well, if you find them, let me know. The most common justification – “we’ve been over servicing your business for six months now, you need to pay us more” – is nuts. Nuts!
5) finding an agency – the word is a bit of an oxymoron. It implies some kind of powerhouse of ideas and execution – the strength of a team. What you generally end-up funding is one very dedicated individual surrounded by some other folks – generally you aren’t quite sure what they are doing but they all arrive for meetings and scribble madly into notebooks.
What is needed is a new kind of agency. One not built on billable hours and 10k budgets. Maybe one built on the power of ideas to drive a startup’s growth curve? One with the courage and conviction to articulate a value proposition that resonates with the CMO of a start-up and ability to explain what the budget should be.
You see, we live less in the conceptual world of brand and reputation and more in the real world of qualified opportunities, pipeline growth and time to sale.
Until then, 10k sounds like a nice round number to start with. Agencies shouldn’t let it end there. We will pay more. And I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
If you want to serve this market, listen closely to Andy’s complaints. Make it your number-one priority to contribute to the growth of your clients’ businesses, not to extract the maximum amount of money from their coffers. Build client-centered teams — and make sure your client meets everyone on the team BEFORE their time shows up on a bill. Finally, start your representation by focusing on the goals of the client and the results they desire. Then agree upon a budget (or, gasp, a fixed price) to meet those goals and achieve those results.
links for 2006-08-03
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Keep surfing the web, even when the boss is looking over your shoulder.
One Week Until the Soulard Idea Market
The Soulard Idea Market happens next week, August 8. Let me know ASAP if you want to come by e-mailing me at Matt@LexThink.com.